Climate Alarmists Say Record Cold Is a Sign of Warming

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

December 2017 was cold and January 2018 has been even colder, with arctic blasts bringing record setting cold and snow blanketing parts of the U.S. — including regions in the Southeast that are not used to it — for the second time in January.

It didn’t take long for climate alarmists to fall into their old trap of saying any extreme whether condition that occurs, even if it contradicts earlier claims they made and common sense, is the result of human caused global warming.

As much of the United States and the world weathered a winter freeze the likes of which has rarely been seen across such a vast swath of the planet as we rang in the New Year, failed presidential candidate Al Gore took to Twitter: “It’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis.”

You read right, as the average temperature for the continental United States was a bone-chilling 11 degrees Fahrenheit on January 1, with more than 85 percent of the country experiencing below-freezing temperatures and nearly 1/3 of the nation facing temperatures 0 degrees Fahrenheit or lower; as residents in China experienced the coldest winter they’ve faced in more than 30 years with some parts of the country plunging as low as -50.04 degrees Fahrenheit; as cold and ice in Europe caused dozens of deaths, when rivers and lakes froze and roads iced over and power failed in many areas leaving villages cut off from outside help; and as residents of Oymyakon, Russia — considered the world’s coldest permanently inhabited town — saw temperatures plummet to 88 degrees below zero on January 16, even colder than the 80 below zero average temperature on Mars; alarmist in chief Gore, citing climate science guru Michael Mann, says it’s due to global warming.

This after Gore and his allies in alarm confidently predicted in 2010 climate change, in the words of one article, meant “The End of Snow?” (NYT 2014) while in 2000 one scientist in the U.K. wrote “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” going on to say they’d have to read about it in history books.

Fortunately, real climate scientists were quick to correct Gore’s absurd claim. In his own tweet, Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist with WeatherBELL Analytics, which provides weather data and forecasts used by companies and governments around the world, wrote, “This is flat out insanity and deception now. To tell the public that events that have occurred countless times before with no climate change attribution, is now just that, is not science, it’s witchcraft … nothing more.”

Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was also a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessments of Climate Change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—no climate skeptic he—also reprimanded Gore for his claim, telling The Daily Caller, “winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change.”

Cliff Mass, a climatologist with the University of Washington, told TheDaily Caller, “Such claims make no sense and are inconsistent with observations and the best science. [O]n a personal note, it is very disappointing that members of my profession are making such obviously bogus claims. It hurts science, it hurts the credibility of climate scientists, and weakens our ability to be taken seriously by society.”

When even fellow “humans are causing dangerous warming” believers find themselves embarrassed by and correcting your claims Al and Michael, its time to shut up and reflect on your repeated knee jerk responses to natural weather events.

Climate Alarmists Say Record Cold Is a Sign of Warming was last modified: January 21st, 2018 by H. Sterling Burnett